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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

"Dulcert" Chart (1339)

Angelino Dulcert created what appears to be the second map to place Prester John in Ethiopia.

See the full map in high resolution.

For more on Dulcert and Prester John see also Kaplan, 54-55

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Orlando Furioso
In Orlando Furioso, first printed in Ferrara in 1516, Ariosto delves into the Matter of France, updating the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins at war with the Saracens with more worldly and whimsical considerations, include a foray to an Ethiopia drawn from the tales of Prester John. In other words, though the text cites as its source the twelfth-century "Song of Roland," Furioso updates the story to suit the imaginiative interests of the time and to satisfy his patron Ippolito Este, Duke of Ferrara. The text has been cited as an influence on the work of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, among other canonical early modern writers.

Orlando Furioso features an Ethiopian priest-king called Senapo/Senapus (a corrupted translation of Abdes-Salib, the Arabic title for the Ethiopian king) who rules over an immensely wealthy kingdom and controls the flow of the Nile River—the very river that dashed crusader hopes during the Fifth Crusade.

Its story of the English Knight Astolfo (a potential avatar of Mandeville, according to Niayesh) and his journey on a hippogriff across North Africa from west to east and thence to Ethiopia appeared at the appropriate moment to sustain interest in this imaginary land. In Canto XXXIII, Astolfo rescues Senapo, who has been rendered blind after trying to discover the Earthly Paradise by seeking out the source of the Nile River.

Ariosto’s is a highly satirical text, his inclusion of the legend shows how, even in the sixteenth century, writers were still attempting to create a plausible backstory to unite the imaginative interest in the legend with a history from which he may have emerged.

Interestingly, the character of Senapo reemerges in Gerusalemme Liberata, a 1581 epic of the Crusades credited to Torquato Tasso.

An excerpt from the William Stewart Rose translation of the expanded version, first published in 1532, follows:
In Aethiopia’s realm Senapus reigns,
Whose sceptre is the cross; of cities brave,
Of men, of gold possest, and broad domains,
Which the Red Sea’s extremest waters lave.
A faith well nigh like ours that king maintains,
Which man from his primaeval doom may save.
Here, save I err in what their rites require,
The swarthy people are baptized with fire.
Ariosto offers a description of the castle and explains the situation:
The soldan, king of the Egyptian land,
Pays tribute to this sovereign, as his head,
They say, since having Nile at his command
He may divert the stream to other bed.
Hence, with its district upon either hand,
Forthwith might Cairo lack its daily bread.
Senapus him his Nubian tribes proclaim;
We Priest and Prester John the sovereign name.

Rogers (pp. 106-107), on Senapo and his connection to Prester John:
[The story's] astonishing accuracy in detail can only be explained by the supposition of meticulous study on the part of its author. For Astolfo’s route and for the name ‘Senapo,’ Ariosto followed a fourteenth-century Genoese tradition. Senapo, as such competent scholars as Cerulli and Crawford affirm, is a deformation of the regnal name of an emperor whose reign extended from 1314 to 1344: ‘Amda Seyon I. His regnal name of Gabra Masqal (in Arabic ‘Abd al-salib) meant ‘slave of the cross.’ The Arabic version appeared as ‘Senap’ on the Angelino Dulcert world map of 1339. Years after publication of Ariosto’s poem, Tasso in the Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) reintroduced Senapo, and Alexander Cunningham Robertson thus presented him to English readers:

Senapo once filled Ethiopia’s throne,
And still, perhaps, endures his prosperous reign:
This potentate the laws of Mary’s Son
Observes, and these observe the swarthy men
He rules…

E-text at Sacred Texts.
Book of Marvels
Mirabilia descripta (1340)

Around the time of Dulcert’s map, Friar Jordanus locates Prester John in Ethiopia. His Mirabilia descripta has the following to say about the priest king:

VI.
1. Of India Tertia I will say this, that I have not indeed seen its many marvels, not having been there, but have heard them from trustworthy persons. For example, there be dragons in the greatest abundance, which carry on their heads the lustrous stones which be called carbuncles. These animals have their lying-place upon golden sands, and grow exceeding big, and cast forth from the mouth a most fetid and infections breath, like the thickest smoke rising from fire. These animals come together at the destined time, develop wings, and begin to raise themselves in the air and then, by the judgment of God, being too heavy, they drop into a certain river which issues from Paradise, and perish there.
2. But all the regions round about watch for the time of the dragons, and when they see that one has fallen, they wait for lxx days, and then go down and find the bare bones of the dragon, and take the carbuncle which is rooted in the top of his head, and carry it to the emperor of the Aethiopans, whom you call Prestre John.

VII.

4. “Of Aethiopia, I say that it is a very great land, and a very hot. There are many monsters there, such as gryphons that guard the golden mountains which be there. Here, too, be serpents and other venomous beasts, of vast size and venomous exceedingly.
5. There, too, are many pretious stones. The lord of that land I believe to be more potent than any man in the world, and richer in gold and silver and in pretious stones. He is said to have under him fifty-two kings, rich and potent. He ruleth over all his neighbours towards the south and west.
6. In this Aethiopia are two burning mountains, and between a mountain of gold. The people of the country are all Christians, but heretics. I have seen and known many folk from those parts.

7. To that emperor the Soldan of Babylon giveth every year 500,000 ducats of tribute as ‘tis said.
8. I can tell nothing more of Aethiopia, not having been there.

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